SarahB and Psalm 137:8-9

[Otter]

In other words, you don't have a single thing to specifically prove me wrong with, but think arguments though emotion are enough. Nice.

Well, let's review the arguments:

Psalm 137 is poetry: Stipulated to and agreed upon

The Poem is not to be taken as instruction: agreed upon

Context Determines meaning: Agreed upon

The Old Testament Contains Explicit Instructions To Genocide: Opinion of Otter, supported with texts

The Old Testament Does Not Contain Explicit Instructions to Genocide: Opinion of lilpixieofterror, without argument

Genocide Is Not The Same As Defensive War: Agreed Upon

Ancient Warfare Necessarily Involves The Extermination of Non-Combatants: Unsupported Opinion of lilpixieofterror

What am I missing, here....?

[Chrawnus]

Quite simply, because it seems to have been common to attempt such a war of extermination.

Could you give me some specific examples, and (if it doesn't get to longwinded) perhaps explain how it relates to the commands found in Deuteronomy and other places in the OT?

[lilpixieofterror]

Well, let's review the arguments:

This should be entertaining.

Psalm 137 is poetry: Stipulated to and agreed upon

The Poem is not to be taken as instruction: agreed upon

Context Determines meaning: Agreed upon

Not too bad, now let’s see where you go wrong.

The Old Testament Contains Explicit Instructions To Genocide: Opinion of Otter, supported with texts

Nope, supported with soundbites and bits of pieces of the text. It's cute that you think throwing out Bible verses is equal to support, but the same sort of idiocy could be used to support all sorts of positions. After all, the Bible 'plainly says' the earth is 6,000 years old, that bats are birds, and that women shouldn't wear pants. Of course, an understanding of the text in question usually renders such stuff nonsense and shows the ignorance of the person that post such nonsense. However; I guess throwing out random Bible verses, without understanding of them and void of context counts as support, in your black/white world view, eh? Guess I must now say that the Bible says that women shouldn't wear pants, eh?

The Old Testament Does Not Contain Explicit Instructions to Genocide: Opinion of lilpixieofterror, without argument

Wrong, I gave plenty of support. Closing your eyes and sticking your fingers in your ears while scream, "LALALALA! I can't hear you!" isn't a refutation. Unless you think ranting, "The Bible says the earth is 6,000 years old!" is a serious refutation to the TE position. Like I said, a black/white, either/or fundy.

Genocide Is Not The Same As Defensive War: Agreed Upon

True and reading the entire Bible and not simply ignore parts you dislike shows that much. You choosing to only quote part of it and ignore the rest is willful ignorance because I know that your quote isn't all that was said and I'm sure that a person that claims to have read the Bible 70 times would know that too.

Ancient Warfare Necessarily Involves The Extermination of Non-Combatants: Unsupported Opinion of lilpixieofterror

Even though I pointed out examples and anybody who isn't an ignorant dolt of history would know how the Romans, Babylonians, and Persians fought, they killed. What did the Romans do, at the end of the Punic wars? What did the Romans do to the Jews once they put down their rebellion in the first century? Are you really that ignorant of ancient history and this isn’t even going into the reality of how prisoners were viewed and the limited resources of the era. Oh dear… lots of ignorance, but I corrected this so why do you refuse to address any of it and instead repeat assertions that I already refuted?

What am I missing, here....?

The arguments I posted that were not your strawmen arguments. I guess sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming, "LALALALA! I can't hear you!" is a valid defense?

[Otter]

Could you give me some specific examples, and (if it doesn't get to longwinded) perhaps explain how it relates to the commands found in Deuteronomy and other places in the OT?

Sure.

We can (and should) start with the biblical examples for one important reason: they either embody a real history of holy wars of extermination (urbicide if not genocide); or else they embody a nationalistic ideal that elevates such wars to a canonical level. I'll assume you have some familiarity with this concept in the Torah, and with the Deuteronomistic history's idea of "herem."

More generally in the ANE, there's an ancient proverb of Sumeria (IIRC) that dates to the third century: "You plundered the enemy's territory, he's plundered yours." The idea of divine war emerges by about the mid second millenium, and the total destruction of cities is given explicit divine imprimatur in lots of cases: urbicide is reflected in lots of inscriptions about battles and explicitly giving divine commands to level the cities and kill the inhabitants, including the cities of Elam, Mari, and Malgum. In fact it seems to have been a pattern in the ANE: you presumed upon a divine command, and this entitled you (indeed commanded you) to level the city. If you spared its inhabitants, you were merciful. If not, you were... well, strong, or cruel, or ruthless depending on who's writing the history.

Among Mesopotamian kings, the destruction of a region and its people had the character of a lawsuit, a judgment for broken treaties or ancient customs that had been witnessed by the gods to whom they offered the blood of the oath-breakers. There's a poem called The Epic of Tikulti Ninurta in which the god Shamash is appealed to as judge in the conflict. This would be just good poetry, except that in lots of ANE inscriptions we get similar claims to divine judgment: the destruction of the city of Umma, for instance, and its people... which is explicitly attributed to the grace of a god.

As for how this relates to the OT:

In modern warfare you can justify quite a bit if you drum up sufficient cause: weapons of mass destruction or whatever. In the ANE the "currency" was the broken treaty, that is, the "wickedness" of the perps. Clear that, and you can leave your cause up to the gods, who command and carry out your war of destruction on your enemies, usually involving urbicide.

Most of the book of Joshua is of this kind of war (though the "wickedness" is religious rather than about broken treaties or something), and it bears some striking resemblances to other ANE wars: the divine command, the divine help, the urbicide, the destruction of the foreign people, the establishment of a new regime.

More?

[Otter]

Nope, supported with soundbites and bits of pieces of the text.

Do you have another interpretation of the text I quoted?

[Chrawnus]

In the Bible it is God who is said to command these actions. While I agree that hyperbole was used throughout the ANE, including the Israelites, the distinction is not the number or boastfullness, but rather the command or prescription for action against enemies.

Well, the problem is that the text itself seems to indicate that these commands were not to be taken literally, but were instead hyperbolical. Take for example Deuteronomy 7:1-5. In verse 2 God commands the Israelites to "utterly destroy" the people mentioned in the preceding verse, which to our eyes reads like a command to completely exterminate them. But then, immediately in the next verse, God forbids the Israelites from intermarrying with the aforementioned nations. But this prohibition is, if the woodenly literal understanding of the earlier command (i.e "utterly destroy") is correct, close to nonsense. Why would God need to prohibit intermarriage between Israel and the surrounding groups of people, if he really intended to cleanse the area of these people? If one instead understands the command as the same sort of hyperbolic rhetoric that was common in the ANE period it becomes more understandable why God would also forbid intermarriage (i.e because the command to "utterly destroy" was never intended literally).

And in addition, Deuteronomy 7:5 seems to indicate that what God really intended for Israel to exterminate, was not the Canaanite nations themselves, but their religion (i.e they were to destroy their altars, pillars and asherims etc...)

Deu 7:1 "When the LORD your God brings you into the land where you are entering to possess it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you,
Deu 7:2 and when the LORD your God delivers them before you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them and show no favor to them.
Deu 7:3 "Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons.
Deu 7:4 "For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods; then the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you and He will quickly destroy you.
Deu 7:5 "But thus you shall do to them: you shall tear down their altars, and smash their sacred pillars, and hew down their Asherim, and burn their graven images with fire.

So, I think the focus was more on the extermination of idolatry, than on the extermination of the Canaanite nations.

I wonder, how many other commands from God, presented in the Bible, are also just hyperbole? How would you go about distinguishing between them?

Presumably through clues left in the text itself, just as in Deuteronomy 7.

Once you start stripping it down what are you (theologically) left with? Pretty much whatever you want.

That sounds to me kind of like a panicked "Chicken Little"-reaction. And I don't really agree. It's not about "stripping it down", the issue is understanding the text correctly, like the original author(s) and recipients would have understood it, or atleast getting as close to their understanding of the text as possible. And in that case, what I want the text to mean is pretty much irrelevant.

[fm93]

Could you footnote the bolded for me?

Sure. See page 92 of Abraham Rihbany's The Syrian Christ. He writes that the Oriental culture has several "imprecatory prayers," such as "May God burn the bones of your fathers," "May God exterminate your seed from the Earth," "May your children be orphaned and your wife widowed," etc. However, he also writes on page 95 that the imprecations

...have always served the Oriental as a safety valve. He is much more cruel in his words than in his deeds. As a rule the Orientals quarrel much but fight little. By the time two antagonists have cursed and reviled each other so profusely they cool off, and thus graver consequences are avoided.

But the poetic expression leaves wide open the question of whether it's _purely_ poetic (which, given the archeological record and the literary examples of Joshua, Judges, and Deuteronomy is not entirely likely).

It's certainly possible that a few Israelites actually carried out this revenge themselves, but we can't assume that on the basis of the psalm alone, as the above quotes from Rihbany show.

My point isn't at all that it's immoral to "say how you're feeling." Certainly it's not that you can't say it poetically.

But you're in no position to say that "the psalmist [does not] intend his psalm to be taken in such a woodenly literal manner."

If he means it, more or less, then he's immoral. If he does not, he's a weak-hearted poet: he's calling for a pretty serious vengeance, and it'd be worth asking why we think (or wish) he didn't mean what he says.

But as shown by Rihbany's examples, we are in such a position to say this. Just as expressions like "May your children be orphaned and your wife widowed" aren't endorsements or exhortations to actually go and kill fathers, neither can we declare that Psalm 137 is an endorsement to dash babies against rocks.

[Otter]

Well, the problem is that the text itself seems to indicate that these commands were not to be taken literally, but were instead hyperbolical. Take for example Deuteronomy 7:1-5. In verse 2 God commands the Israelites to "utterly destroy" the people mentioned in the preceding verse, which to our eyes reads like a command to completely exterminate them. But then, immediately in the next verse, God forbids the Israelites from intermarrying with the aforementioned nations.

It IS meant to be taken literally: the next verse is an intensification of what went before, not an addendum. "Kill them all.... do not marry them" means "Engage in urbicide rather than the practice [also common in the ANE world] of conquest and intermarriage." It doesn't imply a figurative reading at all: nothing in the text justifies that reading.

Think of it this way: if it had said, "Destroy them all... but WHEN you do not and you intermarry....", you'd have a case.

It says, "Destroy them all. Do not intermarry with them."

[Otter]

Sure. See page 92 of Abraham Rihbany's The Syrian Christ. He writes that the Oriental culture has several "imprecatory prayers," such as "May God burn the bones of your fathers," "May God exterminate your seed from the Earth," "May your children be orphaned and your wife widowed," etc. However, he also writes on page 95 that the imprecations

...have always served the Oriental as a safety valve. He is much more cruel in his words than in his deeds. As a rule the Orientals quarrel much but fight little. By the time two antagonists have cursed and reviled each other so profusely they cool off, and thus graver consequences are avoided.

Yeah, I'm generally a fan of his, or at least of the movement towards authenticism that he spawned.

But I think on the evidence that he's just dead wrong about this. (Note: he wrote The Syrian Christ in I think 1916 or thenabouts.)

The inscriptions, the archeology, the population studies....

They all kind of present overwhelming evidence that life in the ANE was pretty freaking violent.

We might have to degree on our sources. But if you run a Scholar Google search on war in the ANE and various related terms ("herem," "urbicide," for instance), you turn up some pretty good scholarship that paint a picture at odds with Rihbany's.

[Chrawnus]

Sure.

We can (and should) start with the biblical examples for one important reason: they either embody a real history of holy wars of extermination (urbicide if not genocide); or else they embody a nationalistic ideal that elevates such wars to a canonical level. I'll assume you have some familiarity with this concept in the Torah, and with the Deuteronomistic history's idea of "herem."

More generally in the ANE, there's an ancient proverb of Sumeria (IIRC) that dates to the third century: "You plundered the enemy's territory, he's plundered yours." The idea of divine war emerges by about the mid second millenium, and the total destruction of cities is given explicit divine imprimatur in lots of cases: urbicide is reflected in lots of inscriptions about battles and explicitly giving divine commands to level the cities and kill the inhabitants, including the cities of Elam, Mari, and Malgum. In fact it seems to have been a pattern in the ANE: you presumed upon a divine command, and this entitled you (indeed commanded you) to level the city. If you spared its inhabitants, you were merciful. If not, you were... well, strong, or cruel, or ruthless depending on who's writing the history.

Among Mesopotamian kings, the destruction of a region and its people had the character of a lawsuit, a judgment for broken treaties or ancient customs that had been witnessed by the gods to whom they offered the blood of the oath-breakers. There's a poem called The Epic of Tikulti Ninurta in which the god Shamash is appealed to as judge in the conflict. This would be just good poetry, except that in lots of ANE inscriptions we get similar claims to divine judgment: the destruction of the city of Umma, for instance, and its people... which is explicitly attributed to the grace of a god.

As for how this relates to the OT:

In modern warfare you can justify quite a bit if you drum up sufficient cause: weapons of mass destruction or whatever. In the ANE the "currency" was the broken treaty, that is, the "wickedness" of the perps. Clear that, and you can leave your cause up to the gods, who command and carry out your war of destruction on your enemies, usually involving urbicide.

Most of the book of Joshua is of this kind of war (though the "wickedness" is religious rather than about broken treaties or something), and it bears some striking resemblances to other ANE wars: the divine command, the divine help, the urbicide, the destruction of the foreign people, the establishment of a new regime.

More?

No, I think this is enough for the time being.

But let's concentrate on the biblical examples. I would suggest, in line with what I wrote in post #66 that these commands are not to be understood literally, as a decree to completely exterminate, but more in line with the tradition of ANE hyperbole, because the text itself seems to support this understanding. As Paul Copan writes in his book, Is God a Moral Monster:

Copan, Paul (2011-01-01). Is God a Moral Monster? (p. 171). Baker Book Group. Kindle Edition.

Joshua’s conventional warfare rhetoric was common in many other ancient Near Eastern military accounts in the second and first millennia BC. The language is typically exaggerated and full of bravado, depicting total devastation. The knowing ancient Near Eastern reader recognized this as hyperbole; the accounts weren’t understood to be literally true.4 This language, Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen observes, has misled many Old Testament scholars in their assessments of the book of Joshua; some have concluded that the language of wholesale slaughter and total occupation—which didn’t (from all other indications) actually take place—proves that these accounts are falsehoods. But ancient Near Eastern accounts readily used “utterly/completely destroy” and other obliteration language even when the event didn’t literally happen that way.

© source where applicable

And if we read Joshua 10:40, it tells us the following:

Jos 10:40 Thus Joshua struck all the land, the hill country and the Negev and the lowland and the slopes and all their kings. He left no survivor, but he utterly destroyed all who breathed, just as the LORD, the God of Israel, had commanded.

But if we read the text itself the literal understanding of Jos 10:40 just doesn't seem to be true. Joshua did not in fact, "utterly destroy" all who breathed. In fact, he himself seem to suggest that there were people still living in the area (Jos 23:7, 12-13), and Jos 13:1, tells us that much of the land was still unpossessed by the Israelites. But Joshua is still credited in Jos 10:40 as following God's command to "utterly destroy". I would suggest that this is a hint that the penchant for hyperbole in the ANE culture is in play here.

[showmeproof]

Well, the problem is that the text itself seems to indicate that these commands were not to be taken literally, but were instead hyperbolical. Take for example Deuteronomy 7:1-5. In verse 2 God commands the Israelites to "utterly destroy" the people mentioned in the preceding verse, which to our eyes reads like a command to completely exterminate them. But then, immediately in the next verse, God forbids the Israelites from intermarrying with the aforementioned nations. But this prohibition is, if the woodenly literal understanding of the earlier command (i.e "utterly destroy") is correct, close to nonsense. Why would God need to prohibit intermarriage between Israel and the surrounding groups of people, if he really intended to cleanse the area of these people? If one instead understands the command as the same sort of hyperbolic rhetoric that was common in the ANE period it becomes more understandable why God would also forbid intermarriage (i.e because the command to "utterly destroy" was never intended literally).

And in addition, Deuteronomy 7:5 seems to indicate that what God really intended for Israel to exterminate, was not the Canaanite nations themselves, but their religion (i.e they were to destroy their altars, pillars and asherims etc...)

Deu 7:1 "When the LORD your God brings you into the land where you are entering to possess it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you,
Deu 7:2 and when the LORD your God delivers them before you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them and show no favor to them.
Deu 7:3 "Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons.
Deu 7:4 "For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods; then the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you and He will quickly destroy you.
Deu 7:5 "But thus you shall do to them: you shall tear down their altars, and smash their sacred pillars, and hew down their Asherim, and burn their graven images with fire.

So, I think the focus was more on the extermination of idolatry, than on the extermination of the Canaanite nations.



Presumably through clues left in the text itself, just as in Deuteronomy 7.



That sounds to me kind of like a panicked "Chicken Little"-reaction. And I don't really agree. It's not about "stripping it down", the issue is understanding the text correctly, like the original author(s) and recipients would have understood it, or atleast getting as close to their understanding of the text as possible. And in that case, what I want the text to mean is pretty much irrelevant.

You're welcome to attempt to explain it away however you like. A command to utterly destroy, whether they were successful in that endeavor or not, is a command to utterly destroy. I've not seen a qualifier 'just joking' behind any of those texts. You're right they did become very much against (at least some aspects) the Canaanite religion (though much of its lore remains integral to Judaism), but it was not always so.

The key to the explanation is understanding when Israel came on to the scene, the socio-political climate just before (including the extrabiblical texts) all the way back to when the Israelite corpus attempts to give background on, and the best estimates to when the Israelite corpus was written.

I've done extensive study on all the above. Tell me, what sources have you used to determine the context of the texts 'as they would have been read' by the Israelites?

[Otter]

No, I think this is enough for the time being.

But let's concentrate on the biblical examples. I would suggest, in line with what I wrote in post #66 that these commands are not to be understood literally, as a decree to completely exterminate, but more in line with the tradition of ANE hyperbole, because the text itself seems to support this understanding. As Paul Copan writes in his book, Is God a Moral Monster:

Copan, Paul (2011-01-01). Is God a Moral Monster? (p. 171). Baker Book Group. Kindle Edition.

Joshua’s conventional warfare rhetoric was common in many other ancient Near Eastern military accounts in the second and first millennia BC. The language is typically exaggerated and full of bravado, depicting total devastation. The knowing ancient Near Eastern reader recognized this as hyperbole; the accounts weren’t understood to be literally true.4 This language, Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen observes, has misled many Old Testament scholars in their assessments of the book of Joshua; some have concluded that the language of wholesale slaughter and total occupation—which didn’t (from all other indications) actually take place—proves that these accounts are falsehoods. But ancient Near Eastern accounts readily used “utterly/completely destroy” and other obliteration language even when the event didn’t literally happen that way.

© source where applicable

And if we read Joshua 10:40, it tells us the following:

Jos 10:40 Thus Joshua struck all the land, the hill country and the Negev and the lowland and the slopes and all their kings. He left no survivor, but he utterly destroyed all who breathed, just as the LORD, the God of Israel, had commanded.

But if we read the text itself the literal understanding of Jos 10:40 just doesn't seem to be true. Joshua did not in fact, "utterly destroy" all who breathed. In fact, he himself seem to suggest that there were people still living in the area (Jos 23:7, 12-13), and Jos 13:1, tells us that much of the land was still unpossessed by the Israelites. But Joshua is still credited in Jos 10:40 as following God's command to "utterly destroy". I would suggest that this is a hint that the penchant for hyperbole in the ANE culture is in play here.

Could you explain why Copan (or you, if you do) think what the rhetoric of total destruction was for?

I mean, let's face it: if a lieutenant tells his troops, "Kill the b******s! Leave none alive!", it's rhetorical. But it's rhetoric for a purpose: to turn farm boys into killers.

So does Copan offer any justification for or explanation for what the rhetoric is meant to produce?

As late as the sixteenth century, it was a common feature of war to destroy an entire city in a religious war, sparing none of the inhabitants. He should (and presumably does) know that it was very frequent in the ANE, if the historical sources have any validity. So why does Copan think that's not really the object of such rhetoric?

[Chrawnus]

It IS meant to be taken literally: the next verse is an intensification of what went before, not an addendum. "Kill them all.... do not marry them" means "Engage in urbicide rather than the practice [also common in the ANE world] of conquest and intermarriage." It doesn't imply a figurative reading at all: nothing in the text justifies that reading.

Think of it this way: if it had said, "Destroy them all... but WHEN you do not and you intermarry....", you'd have a case.

It says, "Destroy them all. Do not intermarry with them."

And I would argue that this is an anachronistic and misinformed reading that doesn't take into account the hyperbolic character of ANE "warfare speech". The issue is not simply the fact that God forbids them from intermarrying with the surrounding groups, there's also the issue of the suggestion that Joshua for example, is credited with carrying out God's command to "utterly destroy" the Canaanite nations, while the text at the same time acknowledges that the same groups of people still lived on in the area.

[Otter]

And I would argue that this is an anachronistic and misinformed reading that doesn't take into account the hyperbolic character of ANE "warfare speech". The issue is not simply the fact that God forbids them from intermarrying with the surrounding groups, there's also the issue of the suggestion that Joshua for example, is credited with carrying out God's command to "utterly destroy" the Canaanite nations, while the text at the same time acknowledges that the same groups of people still lived on in the area.

Yeah, I get that part: but the command itself, whether hyperbolic or not, is not mitigated by what follows, but intensified.

To say, "Oh, hey, well, that's just rhetoric," is kind of a false trail. What do you think that false trail was attempting to do, if not pave the way for a divinely-sanctioned extermination of the people it targets?

It's not MORE moral to say, "KILL THEM ALL!" if your aim is to do exactly that. The biblical texts are filled with trash-talk towards their enemies: look at the daughters of Lot and the alleged genesis of the Moabites. There is a virulent hatred contained in the texts, and the rhetoric was intended to intensify it, not a cushion against it.

[Chrawnus]

Could you explain why Copan (or you, if you do) think what the rhetoric of total destruction was for?

I mean, let's face it: if a lieutenant tells his troops, "Kill the b******s! Leave none alive!", it's rhetorical. But it's rhetoric for a purpose: to turn farm boys into killers.

So does Copan offer any justification for or explanation for what the rhetoric is meant to produce?

As far as I can tell his explanation is simply that this was a literal and rhetorical convention of the time and culture. He's more focused on showing that the texts are engaged in this sort of rhetoric rather than discussing why it does so.

As late as the sixteenth century, it was a common feature of war to destroy an entire city in a religious war, sparing none of the inhabitants. He should (and presumably does) know that it was very frequent in the ANE, if the historical sources have any validity. So why does Copan think that's not really the object of such rhetoric?

Well, I really have no idea how Copan would view the other examples in the ANE period of commands to utterly destroy, or exterminate a certain group of people, but there's always the probability that he would argue that those instances were examples of the same hyperbolic rhetoric too. I don't really know though, you'd have to ask him yourself how exactly he argues when it comes to that.